Life In The Fast Lane
by Spawn Guy
Summary: Somewhere, there has to be a break.


Dear Shadow,

Never thought you'd hear that, huh?

Me neither.

I'm not really writing this, I'm imagining it, because honest to God, what in the hell would drive us to write to each other?

(This is probably the point where'd you stick in the gratuitous jab at my education. You'd be amazed how many languages you pick up running from nation to nation. Sound and language barrier alike be damned!)

I'm doing this because…and this sounds kinda pathetic…you're the only one I think would possibly get this. At all. Ever. Or maybe not, I have no idea how your powers work.

Is that what they are? Powers? It's sounds kind comic bookish. Read a couple of those over the years, when I was twelve and had enough money to buy stuff off a news stand. It's hard to keep track of books and crap when your hiking in the mountains with everything you own tucked in your right hand pocket and no blankets, or following rusty train tracks because they have to go somewhere and you want to get out of the rain. I think I may be the one person on the planet who never bothered to read Harry Potter. ADD's a funny thing, am I right?

Anyway.

I have no idea if being the _**Ultimate**_ whatever is like being an ordinary mutant Emperor Hedgehog (that might be my species. Or it's fancy name. Either that or an African Pigmy Hedgehog) but you're the only other real speedster I know.

I never asked where Tail's got his namesakes, y'know that? Weird. Amy _dyes_ her fur. Found that out last time Robotnik kidnapped her. Rubs the lotion on it's skin, etc. Seriously, he did that to get her to shut up. Locked her in a cage and started pouring water into it. No, it was a tank. Why did I say cage? I thought she was bleeding when I busted through the cockpit of his cruiser. She's annoying as hell, but thank god she didn't have to get checked out. I don't think there was a hospital for a thousand miles. Not that with my speed distance would have mattered, right?

She has nice fur. All brown like I wish mine was. She should leave it that way. Maybe mine was once upon a time and I just, like, subconsciously remember it being brown. Uncle Charles is brown. Dad was blue. There are no colour photos of Mom to tell and Uncle Charles never told me. I never asked. Is your fur black, or did they make you that way?

Same thing I guess, lets try again…

Do _you_ dye it? Sounds like the kinda lame ass thing you'd do.

Heh.

I suppose the question I'm putting off here is _Do You Work Like Me? _However that is, I couldn't know less about what's in my blood and crap like that. I know first aid and how to reset every single bone in someone's (mostly my own) legs at around 120 mph, but I have no idea what I'd look like under an X ray. How my brain shows up.

See…

Apart from the entire chaos powers death god unlimited ammo unholy demon angst oh my god so cool stuff…your basically me. A hedgehog who, quite coincidentally, can break Mach 1 at walking pace.

So do you get this?

This one moment where everything stops because _you_ are the fastest thing alive? Not like 20 % of the time where it feels like your trapped behind a fat guy while he orders whatever off a Burger King menu, but this entire different world that only you exist in?

Not chaos control, not behind time and space, nothing mortal should be there. But for a second…

One second in your hyper mad brain, where thoughts are snapping out of your tissue and membranes and out through your hands and feet and mouth…

One second where it all just stops.

Not freezes, not drags out like a slowed down video, that's stupid, but like a second where everything lines up for your inspection. Only it's an informal inspection.

You can smell the chilli dogs cooking in that guys cart just across the street.

You can hear the children at play behind the bench your sitting on.

You can see the world in high definition, beyond what God intended.

It's all so _relevant_.

_This_ isn't going to vanish into your brain like a book or a quote or a birthday. You won't let it. You _won't_.

There's a pretty fox girl beside you, and if you just put all the words into place and remembered where that little coffee place is, put the words together and reach out to get her attention…

And then it's over.

And I can't even remember what I was talking about.

Dear Shadow….


End file.
